Avoid it... if the famous "Carol Anne's Theme" is too sweet for
your palette and the secondary religious motifs in the score are too
infrequently utilized to salvage the entirety for your non-horror
preferences.

Poltergeist: (Jerry Goldsmith) So active was Steven
Spielberg's imagination in the early 1980's that he couldn't contain
himself and release E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and
Poltergeist successively. In the process of directing the former
and dominating the latter in 1982, he created more controversy with the
concurrent projects than necessary. The famed director and producer both
created the concept of Poltergeist and managed each of its
production elements from start to end. A completely normal family in a
suburban house becomes the progressive target of poltergeists associated
with the spirits of those in the cemetery that was supposed to have been
relocated to accommodate the sub-development. The spirits' revenge
eventually includes the kidnapping of the family's youngest daughter
and, after her successful rescue, the house is literally sucked into a
void and chaos breaks out in the whole neighborhood. For expediency,
Spielberg had horror veteran Tobe Hooper direct the film (despite being
on set for practically all major shoots) and this decision proved
problematic by the time Spielberg was writing public letters in the
newspaper trying to convince a skeptical public that Hooper had any
input into Poltergeist at all. No matter the extent of his
involvement, Poltergeist was a Spielberg film through and
through, and with his usual collaborating composer, John Williams, also
tied up in early 1982 with E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Spielberg
turned to Jerry Goldsmith for Poltergeist. The director had
always been an enormous fan of Goldsmith, though the two would only work
together directly on this and Twilight Zone: The Movie shortly
thereafter. Goldsmith was a natural choice for the assignment, having
won an Academy Award for his memorable horror genre style in The
Omen and extending the same menacing tones to its sequels and
Alien and Magic, among others. In the larger scope of
Goldsmith's career, Poltergeist would mark the culmination of the
composer's efforts in producing the most sinister music an orchestra can
provide, and while he would revisit the genre very late in his career,
he would never achieve the same monumental success. In
Poltergeist, Goldsmith brilliantly created a war between the
sweetest, most innocent lyricism and the darkest, most treacherous
atonality possible. It's a lesson in contrasts so vivid that you can't
help but admire its radical swings of mood and the primordial appeals
that both ends of the sonic spectrum make to each listener.

The highly effective score would gain Goldsmith another
Academy Award nomination, though all of Poltergeist's nominations
would understandably lose to E.T.. Outside of the context of the
film, the memorability of the score is most often created by the softer
elements representing the Freeling family. As the concepts in the story
evolve from the blissful suburban lifestyle to the turmoil of "the other
side," the score turns progressively more frightful, first in a
suspenseful, religious fashion, and eventually in a seemingly
unorganized bombast of atonal orchestral strikes representing "the
beast." The outstanding results from Goldsmith's most strident horror
material in Poltergeist are difficult to diminish simply due to
the fact that they're challenging to casually enjoy on album. But
Goldsmith's route to those depths of fright is what matters, and the
gems within the Poltergeist score exist halfway through that
journey. The score's title theme could deceive the naive in the
audience, though "Carol Anne's Theme" is such an invariably good-natured
representation of a 5-year-old girl's lullaby that anyone can clearly
see that Goldsmith was only using this theme as a control measure for
the contrasting horrors to come. In concert performances of
Poltergeist, listeners are treated to this lovely piece, but in
retrospect, it borders on being contrived when seated next to the
remainder of the score. This idea would be very well integrated into the
rest of the work, especially in fragments, though a fuller arrangement
in "The Neighborhood" (essentially for the main titles) is afforded a
wholesome non-choral tone and bubbly interlude that serves as a
foreshadowing of the composer's many fluffy, light drama themes in the
1990's. The only other truly organized theme in Poltergeist,
however, is its highlight. For the more wondrous and mysterious element
of the religious concept involving the souls caught in between worlds in
the Freeling's sub-development, Goldsmith coins a longing string theme
of curious elegance. First heard during the description of "the other
side" in "The Light," this theme would accompany the psychic Tangina in
"It Knows What Scares You" (otherwise known as "Let's Get Her"). The
floating atmosphere of this melodic string theme causes
Poltergeist's frequent comparison to similar parts of Star
Trek: The Motion Picture. This theme seemingly plays a larger role
in the film than on the various albums for the score, for it is a rare
circumstance when early conversational scenes are provided with a
substantially deep piece of music. In its fragments over the course of
the film's frantic finale, this theme would mostly be unrecognizable due
to its violent shifts in tempo and instrumentation.

As the film and score progress even further into the
realm of the unknown, Goldsmith conjures two more ideas that
successively become less organized. One of these is the transformation
of the religious theme into a tumultuous rhythmic motif for low strings
and brass that first erupts at 2:20 into "Contacting the Other Side"
(also known as "The Jewelry"). This motif steams into full action
throughout "Rebirth," first accompanied by whimsical female choir and
eventually achieving remarkable weight in the fourth minute of that cue.
As the battle to retrieve Carol Anne from the next world ensues, this
"battle rhythm" is often interrupted by full ensemble hits. Its merging
with the religious theme by the fifth minute of "Rebirth" is a highlight
of the entire score. The demeanor of these portions have to make one
wonder if Spielberg did not instruct Goldsmith to use John Williams'
music for the Ark of the Covenant's opening in Raiders of the Lost
Ark as a template for this scene. Hints of this rhythmic material
would be rearranged by Goldsmith for the climax of The Haunting
in 1999, a neat tribute to the earlier score. Horror enthusiasts will
note that this motif clearly inspired Christopher Young when it came
time for his Hellraiser scores, too. Finally, the "beast" itself
is given an identity, but by the time the score addresses it, the motif
is mostly represented by jagged blasts in the lowest registers of the
ensemble. A preview of this idea would be provided in the latter half of
"It Knows What Scares You" (otherwise known as "Let's Get Her") and
occupies the first minute of "Night of the Beast." The larger
representations of this concept are mostly atmospheric in a blasting,
staggered, rhythmic sense. By "Escape from Suburbia," the score has lost
all of its melodic cohesion and exists as only a series of sharp jabs
over groaning, atonal strains. After the Freeling family escapes to a
motel, the end credits returns to a full statement of the innocent
"Carol Anne's Theme" provided at the start, though Goldsmith throws a
kink into the conclusion with a really psychotic mix of laughing girls'
voices overtaking the end of the thematic performance. While showing a
bit of a sense of humor from Goldsmith (or Spielberg; the two
collaborated so closely on the music for the project that it could be
attributed to one or both), the laughing voices at the end are an
extremely effective method of ending the score on a sour note without
resorting to typical surprise tactics. Other singular elements in the
score deserve mentioning. Throughout the recording, and most evident in
the latter half of "Rebirth," Goldsmith utilizes the dry slashing of a
cymbal in a fashion that almost resembles the passing of an electric
shock. As source material, Goldsmith also recorded the Star Spangled
Banner to accompany the television stations' conclusion of broadcasting
for the night, an integral aspect of the film.

Goldsmith actually made no use of synthesizers in
Poltergeist, but he did employ a musical saw, rub rod, bass slide
whistle, water chime, resin drum, and other percussive sounds to both
emulate synthetic effects and represent the sense of eerie unknown. Two
distinct aspects of their contribution make themselves known
immediately. In the first ten seconds of the score, Goldsmith offers the
descending, low range effect that appears throughout the score for the
sake of mystery, as well as the tingling, extremely high range
keyboarded-like accent that usually accompanies it. Overall, Goldsmith's
score is horror in its most classic and intelligent form. Whether or not
you can enjoy its latter half depends on your ability to appreciate the
short bursts of harmony amongst the demonic blasts of fright. The
subsequent sequel score by Goldsmith a few years later would only carry
over "Carol Anne's Theme" and explore a more menacing, male-chorus
variant on the representation of evil. The original LP release of
Poltergeist heavily favored the action material, with 38 minutes
of music rearranged wildly out of film order. In 1997, Rhino and Turner
finally gave Poltergeist a CD release, and it was one of those
rare occasions when a label treats an unreleased score so well that no
subsequent release was necessary for many years. Rhino expanded the
running time to 68 minutes, placing the music in film order and
presenting much of the softer material from earlier in the film.
Interestingly, many of these cues, including an expanded rendition of
"Carol Anne's Theme" in "The Tree," were removed from the film by
Spielberg. Given how closely the composer and producer worked on
Poltergeist, these outtakes' displacement from the film was a
collaborative decision, and some of the problems related to the
recordings' applicability to the film related to the fact that Goldsmith
had to record the music before the special effects sequences were shot.
As such, the composer was sometimes left approximating the
synchronization points of the film. A similar presentation, along with
that of the LP, was offered by Film Score Monthly as a 10,000-unit
pressing in 2010, padding the second of its two CDs with twenty minutes
of source and alternate material that is interesting, but not
earth-shattering. Also included on that second CD is ten minutes of
cleaned up and expanded selections of music from Goldsmith's 1963 score
for The Prize, previously released by the label. The true benefit
of the 2010 album, other than making the score available after the Rhino
product had long gone out of print, is superior sound due to the
discovery of better sources, though some listeners may not notice a
tremendous difference in quality. While the "complete score" tracks on
the two albums differ, they are simply cues combined or split in
different places. On either of its CDs, Poltergeist is an
essential entry for any Goldsmith collector. ****@Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:

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(in 113 reviews)and the average viewer rating is 3.29
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